California Institute of Technology

Award-winning cuisine, live jazz, and a unique ambience with booths, a private patio, and a view of the Bay Area make 42 Degrees a popular dining destination. Reservations are recommended. The restaurant is open for lunch Monday through Friday and for dinner on Wednesday through Saturday.

At San Francisco's premier blues club, visitors enjoy award-winning Southern cuisine and live music by some of the best talent in the San Francisco Bay Area and the nation.

Cannery Row is a popular tourist destination right along the coastline in Monterey. Businesses include world-class galleries, restaurants, and shopping—including factory outlets and specialty shops. It's also a great spot for relaxing or having a picnic on the beach.

Also known as Carmel-by-the-Sea, this town has a whimsical village flavor and sense of individuality. It contains unusual shops and galleries that display the work of local artists, and lies on a scenic stretch of SR 1 that extends from San Francisco to San Luis Obispo.

Chinese shops and restaurants abound in this bustling city within a city, making visitors feel like they've gone straight to the Far East.

This nine-acre historic district each year hosts 9 million visitors who come to experience the unique sites and sounds of Seattle's downtown public market. Helping to make up the market experience are more than 100 farmers, 150 craftspeople, nearly 300 commercial businesspeople, and 50 performers.

Portland's natural beauty, bustling local scene, and award-winning dining and accommodations are all easily accessible via its convenient light-rail system, making it a great place to visit.

One of the country's most popular tourist destinations, San Francisco abounds with great museums and galleries, as well as a diverse arrray of opportunities for shopping and dining. From Downtown districts to Pier 39, all areas are easily accessible via the city's public transportation system.

Vancouver is a cosmopolitan, multicultural city that is famous for its extensive shopping and gourmet dining. This is a city made up of many distinct neighborhoods, each with its own shopping area.

Big Sur offers visitors the opportunity to hike along streams in cool, tree-lined valleys, climb up on high ridges with spectacular coastline views to the west, and gaze over three million acres of wilderness in the Las Padres National Forest to the east. Lodging ranges from rustic to luxurious, and there are well-equipped campgrounds.

This 3,336,000-acre national park contains a wealth of geological 'phenomena:' large sand-dune formations, sculpted rocks, isolated valleys, and volcanic craters. And the canyon and mountain walls change color with the shifting sunlight.

Located in northern Arizona, Grand Canyon National Park encompasses 277 miles along the Colorado River and adjacent uplands. One of the most spectacular examples of erosion anywhere in the world, the vistas at the rim are incomparable.

This park is California's largest redwood state park and includes the Rockefeller Forest, the largest remaining contiguous old-growth coastal redwood forest in the world. The trees here are thousands of years old and have never been logged. This forest is as pristine now as it was 100 years ago.

Here you'll find bunny slopes and Gunbarrel Run; tennis courts and open gyms; public pools; golf greens; miles and miles of trails for foot, bike, or equestrian ventures; and boats with paddles, sails, motors, and sternwheels. With its combination of beaches, mountains, streams, and of course, the lake itself, Tahoe offers some of the best year-round recreation in the world.

Intimate inns, champagne-style sparkling wines, and romantic walks and dinners have enticed lovers to Mendocino County for decades. But families, wine enthusiasts, nature lovers, and fresh-air advocates also find plenty to do here.

Monterey County's dramatic ocean scenery, pristine pine forests, and historic communities appeal to adventure-seekers, seafarers, artists, writers, and vacationers. And no other California county can boast 99 miles of breathtaking Pacific coastline!

Petrified Forest is an area of scenic wonders and fascinating science. The park is located in northeast Arizona and features one of the world's largest and most colorful concentrations of petrified wood. Also included in the park's 93,533 acres are the multi-hued badlands of the Chinle Formation known as the Painted Desert, historic structures, archeological sites, and displays of 225 million-year-old fossils.

The Puget Sound area offers a rich variety of vacation, recreational, and holiday pursuits including big-city life, island retreats, cozy bed and breakfasts, romantic country inns, and first-class resorts. There are also plenty of opportunities for sightseeing, hiking, kayaking, and boating.

Established as a national park in 1890, Yosemite comprises a spectacular tract of scenic mountains and valleys in the Sierra Nevada. The park harbors a magnificent collection of waterfalls, meadows, and forests that include groves of giant sequoias, the world's largest living things.

Zion is an ancient Hebrew word meaning a place of refuge or sanctuary. Protected within the park's 229 square miles is a dramatic landscape of sculptured canyons and soaring cliffs. Zion is located at the junction of the Colorado Plateau, Great Basin, and Mojave Desert provinces. This unique geography and the variety of life zones within the park make Zion significant as a place of unusual plant and animal diversity.

Alcatraz Island is one of Golden Gate National Recreation Area's most popular destinations, offering a close-up look at a historic and infamous federal prison long off-limits to the public.

This Golden Gate Park institution features a natural history museum, an aquarium, and a planetarium.

The building itself is as beautiful as some of the artwork contained within. Their extensive collection includes works from the 13th to the 20th centuries, including Monet, Manet, Rubens, Van Gogh, Picasso, Seurat, and many other famous European artists. Earlier works date from approximately 2500 B.C. An original cast of Rodin's The Thinker dominates the entrance to the museum.

Several restored locomotives along with exhibits describing railroad history are housed in this museum's striking brick and glass building.

In the beautiful gardens of Rosicrucian Park, this museum showcases one of the country's largest collections of Egyptian, Babylonian and Assyrian antiquities.

Famously diverse and unconventional, San Francisco is a world cultural center of many flavors. Music, the arts, cuisine, and just about anything else the soul desires thrives in a place where many visitors leave their hearts.

The San Francisco Ballet is America's oldest ballet company, enjoying a long and rich tradition of artistic "firsts." Still one of country's finest ballet companies, the ensemble performs an eclectic repertoire of full-length, neo-classical, and contemporary ballets. Performances are held in the War Memorial Opera House, which is near the City Hall and Civic Center area.

Storyville provides quality jazz in an intimate club setting reminiscent of the classic jazz clubs of the 1930s. The elegant decor, style, and ambiance make for an unforgettable San Francisco experience.

This site, once part of a 48,000-acre ranch named New Helvetia (New Switzerland), has been restored to the way it was two years before gold was discovered here in 1849.

This college campus encompasses more than a thousand scenic acres that include archives, art and science museums, a botanical garden, and a 307-foot-tall bell tower.

The California State Fair is housed annually at Cal Expo on 356 acres adjacent to the American River. The fair attracts guests from all over the world by offering affordable family entertainment and a wide selection of attractions showcasing the international diversity of the Golden State.

The Exploratorium in San Francisco contains more than 650 interactive exhibits that invite visitors to see, touch, hear, feel, and explore the fields of science, mathematics, technology, animal behavior, and human perception. A featured exhibit is the Tactile Dome, a totally dark geodesic dome with 13 chambers and no right angles. Visitors make their way through the chambers by crawling and sliding, using only their sense of touch.

The excitement of grand-scale theater is offered in the intimate setting of this classic black-box theater, located two blocks from Union Square in the heart of the theater district. This theater presents established and emerging artists in a variety of productions, including original scripts, modern comedies, adult improv, children's classics, and developing works by recognized playwrights.

You'll fly over the Golden Gate Bridge, zip down Lombard Street at 60 miles and hour, see San Francisco's Chinatown and Fisherman's Wharf, and feel the sound of earthquakes through a 5,600-watt digital sound system. You'll also get to experience part of San Francisco's great history. This is all shown on a giant Cinemax screen.

The Aquarium's exhibits take you into the hidden world of Monterey Bay, a spectacular ocean realm at the heart of the nation's largest marine sanctuary. The exhibits re-create the bay's habitats, from shallow tide pools to the open ocean and deep sea.

Napa Valley is lined with vineyards and stunning mountain views. Winery estates pepper the floor of the valley, offering visitors a wide variety of choices for both wine tasting and picture taking.

This 100-acre family entertainment center is situated between Highway 101 and Highway 237. Five major theme areas evoke North America's 'past:' Hometown Square, Yukon Territory, Yankee Harbor, County Fair, and Orleans Place. Among the amusement rides are a double-decker carousel, a three-armed Ferris Wheel that stands 110 feet tall, and five roller coasters.

Entertainment in Reno means big-name stars headlining in plush showrooms. The Reno music scene features some of the brightest stars from Motown, Nashville, and Hollywood. There's also top-notch comedy, a burgeoning art culture, local performing-arts productions, and 24-hour gaming.

Established in 1904, this half-mile-long boardwalk is reminiscent of turn-of-the-20th-century amusement parks. A magnificent casino built in 1907 has been renovated to house an entertainment facility, and the park's Looff carousel dates from 1911. The Giant Dipper roller coaster, built in 1924, ranks among the nation's most thrilling.

In 1884, a wealthy widow named Sarah L. Winchester began a construction project of such magnitude that it was to occupy the lives of carpenters and craftsmen until her death thirty-eight years later. The Victorian mansion, designed and built by the Winchester Rifle heiress, is filled with so many unexplained oddities that it has come to be known as the Winchester Mystery House. Daytime tours of the house are offered, as well as some nighttime tours.